There has been a large expansion in the number of microwave foods available on the market. In the area of bread-like foods, little improvement in textural attributes has been made in commercially available microwavable products. Bread products that are heated in a microwave oven may exhibit excessive toughening and firming. The outer crust layer may become so tough that it is difficult to tear such a product. The inner crumb may become very difficult to chew. Also, the textural quality can deteriorate much faster than that of a conventional oven baked product during the course of cooling. Overcooking in a microwave oven may exacerbate the problem while a reduction in overall cooking or reheating may reduce toughness and firmness.
Frozen, bake at home bread products have been developed over the years. These products were initially expressly developed for baking in thermal ovens and could not be cooked in microwave ovens. Further, some frozen crusts have been made available for pizza manufacture but have been formulated and designed solely for cooking in thermal ovens. While these products have had some success in the marketplace, a strong desire has existed for many years for microwaveable dough products that cook in a microwave oven to a fully acceptable form equivalent to that made by conventional baking processes.
The vast majority of frozen pizzas designed for microwave energy heating have comprised foods made by forming a topping on a pre-baked crust. Such foods are typically configured for reheating in a microwave oven such that the partially baked (par-baked) crust is returned to a semblance of the baked crust as it was freshly made prior to freezing. Such a par-baked, ready to heat and eat crusts are well known and have been available for many years. These foods, when reheated, do not substantially change in the nature of the size or thickness of the crust, do not obtain any substantial chemical or yeast driven leavening of the crust, typically do not change the bready texture of the crust and do not typically result in substantial browning characteristics in the reheating of the product.
A number of attempts have been made to provide dough compositions and bread-like products that can be obtained through baking in a microwave oven. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,035,904, 6,123,975 and U.S. Publication No. US2004/0213883, all describe dough composition that may be prepared in a microwave oven. All of these compositions tend to become drier, firmer, tougher and crumblier and have less acceptable texture, as demonstrated by expert panel or instrumentally, within a short time after cooking in a microwave oven. Hence, a need exists for dough compositions, par baked, and pre-baked products that can be prepared in a microwave oven and yield products with preferred textural qualities for an extended time after cooking.